Members of the music community have watched developments with an
anxious eye since 2010, concerned that a curfew enforcement that forced
street musicians including the To Be Continued Brass Band to stop
playing would evolve into the start of an anti-live music trend.

Unrelated
zoning and Alcohol Beverage Control Board actions involving popular
live-music venues The Circle Bar, Siberia, Jimmy’s Music Club and St.
Roch Tavern have fed this fear — a phenomenon the Oxford Acoustics
report sees as a rationale for more a systematic approach to
enforcement.

Hannah
Kreiger-Benson, spokesperson for the Music and Culture Coalition of New
Orleans, a group of musicians and others worried about ordinance
changes they fear could grow too restrictive, appreciates how the report
makes the conversation more concrete.

“The act of bringing science into the discussion is so worthwhile,” she said.

Is it, though? If t"bringing science into the discussion" results in a more efficient and objective system for shutting down live music, then what's really being developed here is a rhetorical cover for an even more aggressive pursuit of an objectionable policy.

I'd also like to know more about what kind of "science" is being done here. Something about this seems a little less than purely objective.

The ordinance needs to be revised, according to the new report,
because “the law doesn’t fit the situation,” said Oxford Acoustics’
David Woolworth, who is also a member of the rock band The Kudzu Kings.

Technology
has presented a whole range of sound frequencies that earlier versions
of the ordinance didn’t have to account for. The report draws particular
attention to the sonic footprint of the low, bass frequencies present
in much dance music.

“They travel so far, and they travel into
buildings,” he said. “I spoke with a gentleman in Treme who said, ‘We’ve
always had these things going on.’ The activity level may be similar,
but actual character of the sound has changed.”

See, the "character of the sound has changed." The kids today don't go for the same pretty sounds their grandparents used to enjoy. They like "low bass frequencies" used in new and mysterious kinds of "dance music." Previously proponents of stricter noise enforcement would say unsophisticated things about how young people play their ethnic music too loud. Now they can encode that same message into some jargon about changing technology and suddenly the same complaint is all sciencey.

All they've really done is apply a new technocratic-sounding approach toward an old political objective. The whole thing is textbook Landrieu-ism.